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GETHOSTNAME(2) Linux Programmer's Manual GETHOSTNAME(2)
NAME
gethostname, sethostname - get/set host name
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int gethostname(char *name, size_t len);
int sethostname(const char *name, size_t len);
DESCRIPTION
These system calls are used to access or to change the host name of the
current processor. The gethostname() system call returns a null-termi-
nated hostname (set earlier by sethostname()) in the array name that
has a length of len bytes. In case the null-terminated hostname does
not fit, no error is returned, but the hostname is truncated. It is
unspecified whether the truncated hostname will be null-terminated.
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
set appropriately.
ERRORS
EFAULT name is an invalid address.
EINVAL len is negative or, for sethostname(), len is larger than the
maximum allowed size, or, for gethostname() on Linux/i386, len
is smaller than the actual size. (In this last case glibc 2.1
uses ENAMETOOLONG.)
EPERM For sethostname(), the caller did not have the CAP_SYS_ADMIN
capability.
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.4BSD (this interfaces first appeared in 4.2BSD). POSIX.1-2001
specifies gethostname() but not sethostname().
NOTES
SUSv2 guarantees that 'Host names are limited to 255 bytes'.
POSIX.1-2001 guarantees that 'Host names (not including the terminating
null byte) are limited to HOST_NAME_MAX bytes'.
GLIBC NOTES
The GNU C library implements gethostname() as a library function that
calls uname(2) and copies up to len bytes from the returned nodename
field into name. Having performed the copy, the function then checks
if the length of the nodename was greater than or equal to len, and if
it is, then the function returns -1 with errno set to ENAMETOOLONG.
Versions of glibc before 2.2 handle the case where the length of the
nodename was greater than or equal to len differently: nothing is
copied into name and the function returns -1 with errno set to ENAME-
TOOLONG.
SEE ALSO
getdomainname(2), setdomainname(2), uname(2)
Linux 2.6.7 2004-06-17 GETHOSTNAME(2)